Candidates Urge Stiffer Penalties

Officials Say Proposed Gun Bills Would Overcrowd State's Prisons

April 10, 1989|By PENNY BENDER Staff Writer

At a recent Republican debate, former U.S. Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr. called for stiffer penalties for criminals using guns.

Instead of laws restricting the sale of guns, Trible's answer is 10 years in prison, no parole or probation, for people convicted of using a firearm to commit a felony. "We'll put billboards up at our borders and have public service announcements putting the world on notice," he said.

But will it work? Several local criminal justice officials say Trible's solution would hike the cost of running prisons in Virginia and make for disparate prison sentences. They also say it would never get past the General Assembly.

Trible's plan is one of many law-and-order proposals made by the three Republicans seeking their party's nomination for governor on June 13. J. Marshall Coleman, who served as attorney general from 1978 to 1982, has zeroed in on drug abuse, calling for stiffer penalties for drug traffickers and more attention to drug abuse in schools. Eighth District Rep. Stanford E. Parris has called for the death penalty for drug-related murders and has called for federal intervention to curb the high murder rate in Washington, D.C.

Virginia already has a law that requires a person using a gun in a robbery, abduction, murder or any other crime to serve two years in jail, in addition to time given for the actual crime. And unlike most other prison sentences, the judge is not allowed to suspend any of the time.

Sen. Edwina P. Dalton, R-Henrico, who is running for lieutenant governor, proposed a measure similar to Trible's at this year's General Assembly session, but the bill never made it out of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. Her bill called for raising the sentence for using a gun in a crime to five years. The punishment for second-time violators would be 10 instead of the current four years.

The state Department of Corrections can't say how much Trible's initiative would cost, but it was required to compute the impact of Dalton's milder proposal.

Dalton's bill would add 222 inmates to the prison system by 1995. Virginia's prisons now have about 13,000 inmates. Each one costs about $17,100 a year to support, which means at 1988 prices, the state would need $3.79 million more a year to support the additional 222 prisoners.

Wayne Farrar, corrrections spokesman, said 517 felons in 1988 were serving sentences for firearms convictions; for 425 of them, it was the first such conviction.

Both Newport News and Hampton commonwealth attorneys, both Democrats, found more wrong than right with Trible's suggestion.

"Everybody's not a violent bank robber using a gun," Robinson said. "There may be times a jury wouldn't convict, saying it's too heavy."

Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney Christopher W. Hut ton notes that a criminal would likely serve more time for the secondary gun offense than for the primary crime.

The punishment for robbery, for instance, can range from two years to life. Defendants now rarely get 10 years for robbery and use of a firearm.

"The person ought to be sentenced appropriately on the robbery itself," he said.

"It's very easy to say let's raise the mandatory sentence. If you do that, you have to be willing to raise the income" to pay for prison space, Hutton said. "You can't have it both ways."

Williamsburg Circuit Judge Russell M. Carneal, also a Democrat, said he doesn't consider adding more time to the sentence a deterrent. "We have the electric chair for capital murder, and that doesn't seem to deter anyone."

"I do hope he's prepared to appropriate a whole lot of money to incarcerate all these people," Carneal added.

Trible spokesman John Miller said the state has a multi-million-dollar surplus that could be used to pay for more prison beds.

Trible is aware that in some cases the firearms offense would bring more time than the main conviction. "This is certainly going to be a deterrent when people realize they'll get 10 years" for using a gun, he added.

It probably wouldn't sway the General Assembly, however, said Walter S. Felton Jr., administrator of the Council of Commonwealth's Attorneys. The legislature has routinely rejected significant increases in that law, he said. "It's going to take an awful lot of convincing to get them to change their stance."

Using the argument that increasing prison time deters peo ple from misusing guns "doesn't have a whole lot of credibility" with the lawmakers because no one has presented substantive proof, said Felton, who often is called on to draft amendments to the criminal code.